Rethinking Journalism

I began reading Farhad Manjoo’s book True Enough: Learning To Live In a Post-Fact Society expecting to just get through it and get a grade for reading it. After two weeks of reading, and class discussion, I believe I am now a more open person, and a better journalist.

I have never been assigned to read a book in a class that I have taken more out of, or that has opened my eyes to more things. Instead of reading this and taking a quiz on it, I started to notice myself thinking about what he was saying, and questioning our current type of “journalism.” In all honesty, this was one of the few times in my collegiate career that I felt like I was in an actual journalism class.

Me saying that is not necessarily a knock on previous courses or teachers, but I believe that this book, and its ideas sparked a deep interest inside of me in the way we think of journalism. Instead of learning about how journalism has always been, I found myself thinking about where journalism is going, and whether or not where it is heading is good.

I have had my thoughts and ideas about journalism, and the current change that our industry is going through, and this book helped to show me that my ideas and beliefs may be true. I feel like the type of journalism that we have come to know will soon become the journalism of tomorrow, and despite the fact that people may think this is a bad thing, I believe it is a necessary change.

The first aspect of journalism that Manjoo discussed that really interested me was the fact that people don’t necessarily choose a side of an argument, but rather they side with someone who makes the argument for them. People tend to agree with a certain news anchor, analyst or station. This is what has caused the switch from, “unbiased, straight-fact” journalism to “opinion and hard-stance” journalism throughout the last couple of decades.

In a world of hundreds of TV stations, multiple newspaper cities, twitter, cell phones, the internet and blogs, the way people get their news is completely different. People now have more power than ever to determine what is important to them. The public chooses what they want to hear, and who they want to hear it from.

This subject was the most interesting to me, because for a long time I have felt that people only want to listen to news that has the same viewpoints and ideals as they do. People choose their favorite newspaper or news station, based on their ideals, and who is associated with that company.

I think this is not just a trend, but it could very well be the future of journalism. We now have opinionated blogs, twitter and opinionated news networks that people turn to to find out what is happening in the world, and the more that people watch or subscribe to this type of “news” the more journalism will switch to news with opinions.

For many in the journalism world, this is very troubling. We are all taught to think that journalism should be unbiased while presenting the facts and both sides of the story.

If there is one thing that I have learned from Manjoo’s book, it is to question everyone and everything. That is what I did with this issue. Is this type of journalism bad, or can we take this stance and run with it?

Who is to say that multiple networks with different viewpoints shouldn’t just give the news with their opinions and stance on each subject? Wouldn’t that at least be more responsible? Shouldn’t news come out and say their biases and let viewers decide what they want to believe instead of pretending that they are neutral?

I think this may be the new type of journalism that we will see in the future. People will only listen to who they want to believe, but there will be many different opinions out there for people to base their decisions on.

Journalists now-a-days are so worried that the industry is dying, and that we are getting away from our roots, but I believe that we are just adapting to the new type of audience that we have. People want everything that they want to know delivered to them with all the details in a concise form. So, if this is true, why don’t we change the way we give people the news? I know this blog was not meant to give our crazy ideas on where we think journalism is going, but that is what Manjoo’s book did to me. It made me want to be proactive in changing the journalism world, instead of just letting our field die out. If I can do it, why can’t everyone else?

I would love to discuss all of the little details and ideas that Manjoo expressed in his book, but the overall theme was the most important to me. We have to rethink what people want from the news, and we have to rethink the way we give it to them. Keep asking. Keep questioning. Keep reporting. And most importantly keep rethink ourselves and everyone else. Those should be our roots as journalists.

The world may be changing, but who said change had to be bad?

As journalists, our role is to inform the public about issues that are important to them, so why are we doing it in ways that are not capturing their attention. The public has evolved, and now it is time for the news industry to do the same.

The public doesn’t trust politicians, they don’t trust advertising, they don’t trust the media. The current system is broken, and I will not sit around and let the current way of journalism just die out. It is time to revamp journalism, not just at the national level, but locally and we have to begin finding and teaching these new ideas and ways of communication in our journalism schools.

I, for one, am glad that one of my teachers has seen this, and I am glad we were exposed to this book.